


i never really got what i wanted

by kiira



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/F, okay but it's only Angel/Faith cause it takes place during Enemies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 10:44:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1937922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiira/pseuds/kiira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Do you think you're better than me? Do you? Say it, you think you're better than me.'</p>
<p>'I am. Always have been.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	i never really got what i wanted

            You were (are) completely in love with Buffy, in love with her friends, in love with her family, in love with her life. She’s got everything you never had the chance to have, everything you used to close your eyes and pray for under your covers.

 

            It’s not fair. And you know that life isn’t fair, but this is past that.  _We’re the same_ , you wanted to scream, scream at her and everyone who gave you a dirty look while kissing the fucking ground she walked on.  _The same_. She just got the not-dead watcher who loved her like the father she never had and the smiling, happy mother who probably helped her with her math homework and woke up every morning to make her darling daughter breakfast.

 

            But now Buffy’s in chains, locked up and you have the boyfriend. For the first time since you arrived in this shithole of a town, you’re on top, and when you kiss Angel, you think you can taste Buffy on his lips.

 

            She makes a small whimpering noise, and blinks slowly. For a minute she looks peaceful, and for a minute you pretend that she’s your friend, that she had bothered to get to know you beyond those first desperate days. As soon as her eyes open, they’re full of venom and disappointment and you remember Buffy would never be your friend.

 

            So you smirk and stand closer to Angel, curling your fingers into his jacket until Buffy winces. You stand up on your tiptoes and kiss him, kiss him hard. When you turn back to Buffy, her eyes are closed and you want to laugh. You fucking sat through her taking everything that should be yours for weeks with a smile pasted on, and as soon as you’re just taking back what should have always been yours, she can’t even fucking watch.

 

            She wouldn’t have lasted one week back in Boston.

 

            You spit insults in her face, but you’re almost breaking with happiness, so happy that finally (finally) you’re in charge and Buffy can only watch with fear as you uncover your shiny, glittering knives. You lean in close, and hit her, hard. Blood stains her lip as she comes up with some sad remark about your rage, but it can’t even begin to upset you in the slightest. You just shrug it off with a comment about being the world’s best actor, and you smile to yourself.

           

            Everything, for once, is perfect. For once it’s all fitting together just how you planned.

 

            But then Angel opens his mouth, and as soon as he speaks, everything shatters. His voice is wrong, all wrong and his words are even worse.

 

            Buffy steps away from the wall, smirking and holds her wrists up, bare. She moves to Angel, always always always to Angel, and your whole body is frozen. Buffy’s friends break down the door, and they’re ruining everything, they’re destroying the last grip you had on Buffy’s life.

 

            With a scream that you’re not sure actually passes your lips you launch yourself at Buffy, nails curled, ready to scratch out her eyes, reach down her throat and pull out her still-beating heart. The fight is good for a moment, comforting and easy, easy to slip into the motions and forget betrayal, forget Buffy’s holier-than-thou smile as she talked with Angel over your head, double-checking they had taken every bit of your precious information. But you’re too angry and you lose control quickly, and before you even have her blood painting your hands, under your nails, in your mouth, she’s got a knife to your throat, her hand shaking.

 

            Now you do laugh. She can’t kill you. She can’t do it. Won’t do it, and you tell her so. Her worst fear, you realize, is becoming you. She terrified to lose whatever grasp she still has on her perfect little life, terrified to actually let go and lose herself in being a Slayer.

 

            “Kill me, you become me,” and her eyes widen and she looks almost like she wants to say something. You don’t want to hear her righteous, preachy response, can’t hear her try to still be the perfect one, so you lean in quick and kiss her.

 

            You had thought that you could taste Buffy on Angel’s lips, but she’s so much purer than anything Angel could ever keep. Tightening your fingers in her soft blonde hair, you let yourself think for a half-second that she’s kissing you back, but before you let yourself get carried away like that, you pull away just as quickly as you leaned in. While Buffy’s still sitting there, anger and confusion written on her pretty, pretty face, you sprint across the room and through the window.

 

            The landing hurts, your emotions muddling months of training, and you land funny on your ankle. Running would be stupid, you know, because if you stopped now your ankle would be okay by morning, but if you ran on it, probably not. If you hurt yourself bad, your usefulness to the Mayor shrinks and his sorta, maybe love for you shrinks too. So you creep around the edge of the house, back to an old, half-collapsed entrance and curl up in the doorway, waiting until you hear the happy noises of Buffy and her stupid friends leaving to go back to their happy, stupid lives.

 

            You can hear Willow say with a giggle, “The bitch didn’t even know what hit her,” and you want to kill Willow, want to pull her guts up out through her happy, stupid mouth, slip a knife into her side and watch as she bleeds out through her stupid Renaissance fair reject dresses and fuzzy pink sweaters.

 

            Xander laughs and “I always knew she was evil,” and you have to curl your nails in your hands and bite your tongue until it bleeds to keep yourself from running out and screaming at him, were you evil to him when he stood outside your room waiting for sex, evil while you were part of their stupid little Scooby Gang and sat across from him at the table in the library, feeling his gaze slip over to you, undressing you silently every time the conversation got too technical for him?

 

            Buffy stays silent, and you almost want her to join her friends, almost want her to say terrible things about you, cause if she did you would have a reason to hate her. After all, that’s what the Mayor wants. Hate.

 

.     .     .

 

            You failed, is what you forgot while curled in on yourself behind the mansion. You failed at gaining Angelus as an ally, failed at showing Buffy what it felt like to be always second best, failed at killing her. Or at least having Angel kill her. You don’t know if you could have done it yourself.

 

            The Mayor stops his gentle scolding, something foreign to you, anger without bruised ribs and broken arms, and crosses over to you, lifting your chin. “Not still upset about the Buffy-Angel thing, are we?” He sounds like one of the dads in the old sit-coms they used to play on public access early in the morning.

 

            “No.” You toss your hair, trying to give off an air of complete indifference. “ _He_  can have her if she really wants. I’m over it. Over her.”

 

            The Mayor gives you a funny look, and walks back to his desk. Scrambling, you try to fix it.

 

            “I mean…,” but the Mayor has moved on, electing to ignore your slip, or maybe writing it up to exhaustion.

 

            “You were too good for them, all of them. Always were. I’m glad you’re over it, Faith. Now…”

 

            Tuning him out, with the pure taste of  _Buffy_  still singing on your lips, you know you’re not.

 

 


End file.
